The crisp sound was like a drop of water falling into a deathly still abyss, spreading in an instant to every corner of the hall and striking against everyone’s eardrums.
“Tap… tap… tap…”
The sound had a rich rhythm, neither hurried nor slow. It did not seem to come from any fixed source, but circled above the empty hall—now on the left, now on the right—carrying a hint of mockery and temptation.
“All members on guard! Maintain formation!” An Mu’s voice was low and steady, like a boulder thrown into a raging current, instantly steadying the nerves that had gone taut from the sudden situation. “Lan Ce, analyze the sound source!”
“Copy.” There was not the slightest panic in Lan Ce’s gaze behind his lenses. He quickly lowered his head to look at the tactical tablet on his wrist, where a series of complex data streams flashed past like a waterfall. “Sound wave frequency stable at 4,000 hertz. It’s the sound of a physical object striking a hard surface. Preliminary material assessment: glass or some high-density crystal. The sound source is… sound source localization failed. It’s moving—or rather, it’s using the special structure of this space for multiple reflections, creating an echo that cannot be pinpointed. Captain, the energy field here… is very strange.”
“How so?”
“Extremely calm.” Lan Ce frowned. This was clearly contrary to his expectations. “The mental contamination index is almost zero. There are no obvious malicious energy fluctuations. This sound is like a purely physical phenomenon, a harmless prank.”
“How is that possible?” Mo Fei said in a lowered voice, battle-axe in hand. “In a damned place like this, even the air stinks. How could there be anything ‘harmless’! This thing is messing with us! Captain, I’ll go up and take a look. Whatever it is, I’ll split it with one axe and we’ll have some peace!”
“Stay where you are, Mo Fei.” An Mu’s voice brooked no argument. “Until we understand the situation, no one is to act on their own.”
Lu Yueqi gripped the psychic-impact tranquilizer gun in her hands tightly, her palms slick with cold sweat.
Her hearing seemed a little sharper than the others’. In the gaps between those crisp marble sounds, she seemed to hear something else.
It was like the noise of countless people whispering under their breath, and also like something lightly scraping its fingernails along the wooden handrail of the second-floor corridor.
Those sounds made her scalp go numb, but she remembered Bai Yu’s instructions with desperate clarity. She did not scream. She only moved a little closer toward Bai Yu and said in a breath so soft that almost only she could hear it, “Bai Yu… I think… I heard something else too…”
“I know. Don’t be afraid.”
Bai Yu’s calm voice sounded by her ear, allowing her wildly pounding heart to settle slightly. His gaze had remained fixed on that bottomless darkness on the second floor. Not the slightest light was reflected in those deep eyes of his; there was only a still, empty void.
Of course he could hear it.
Not only those stray noises—he could even “hear” the emotion behind that sound.
It was not malice, not hatred, nor resentment.
It was a kind of… “anticipation,” tinged with innocence and cruelty.
Like a child who had been lonely for far too long, finally waiting for the “toy” he had long yearned for. It was using its favorite method to invite them into its “playroom.”
“It’s inviting us,” Bai Yu said. His voice was not loud, but it clearly suppressed that eerie marble sound. “This isn’t an attack. It’s guidance. It wants us to go up.”
“Heh… What a straightforward and stale opening line. Using simple ‘curiosity’ as bait, just like dealing with moths flying into a flame.” Hei Yan’s voice leisurely sounded in the depths of Bai Yu’s consciousness, carrying the tone of a connoisseur’s appraisal. “However, what sort of tragedy does the director of this play intend for us ‘audience members’ to enjoy?”
An Mu glanced at Bai Yu. He trusted Bai Yu’s almost beastlike intuition when dealing with such supernatural phenomena, as well as his ability to perceive emotions.
After a moment of silence, he made his decision. “All right. Since the host has already extended an invitation, we have no reason to refuse. Mo Fei, you take point. Lan Ce and I will stay in the middle. Bai Yu, you and Lu Yueqi bring up the rear. Everyone maintain a three-meter interval and advance with alternating cover. Remember, from this moment on, we are entering a domain with unknown rules. Do not easily trust your eyes or your ears. The only ones we can trust are each other.”
“Yes!”
Everyone answered in unison.
Leading to the second floor was a wide main staircase made of wood. Perhaps it had once been imposing, but now only rot and ruin remained. The dark red carpet had long since decayed into ragged strips, revealing wooden boards beneath that had been eaten full of holes by termites. The handrails on both sides were covered in a thick layer of dust, and touching them brought a sticky, icy sensation.
Mo Fei walked at the very front, moving with extreme caution as he tested the stairs’ load-bearing strength.
“Creak—”
The sound was like a groan from the throat of a dying man, particularly grating in the deathly silent hall.
The team slowly moved upward. The tactical lights on their helmets tore open the darkness ahead, illuminating large patches of peeling wall on either side, as well as the dark brown mold stains spreading like veins beneath the plaster. The rotten smell of medicine in the air grew heavier, as if they were walking into the interior of an enormous corpse.
Strangely, the moment they stepped onto the first stair, the “tap, tap, tap” of the marble vanished.
The entire world instantly sank into absolute silence.
This silence was even more unsettling than the marble sounds from before. It was like an invisible net, trapping the five of them firmly within it. Every heartbeat, every breath, was magnified without limit, as if it might wake some terrifying existence lurking in the dark at any moment.
Lu Yueqi was so tense she could hardly breathe. She followed closely behind Bai Yu, staring without blinking at his back—the back that gave her an incomparable sense of safety.
At last, they stepped onto the floor of the second level.
Before them was the corridor that had appeared in the photographs sent back by the drone, its end seeming to have been swallowed by darkness.
The corridor was very long. On both sides were tightly shut white ward doors. Each door was fitted with a small observation window that could be pulled open with a metal plate. At this moment, those observation windows were all tightly closed, yet they gave the illusion that behind each of those black squares, countless pairs of eyes were silently peering at them.
The floor was covered in dull, lusterless linoleum, mottled with stains and dried traces. On the ceiling, old hanging lamps drooped like hanged corpses, covered with cobwebs.
This place was like a passage leading to hell, filled with despair and congealed suffering.
“The mental contamination index is beginning to show slight fluctuations. Increase of 0.5%, still within the safe range for now.” Lan Ce’s voice came through the earpieces. His data report was the only proof at this moment that they were still in reality. “The concentration of residual negative mental energy here is extremely high. I recommend all members activate their ‘Mental Anchors,’ just in case.”
“Copy,” An Mu replied.
Everyone did as instructed and began silently reciting in their hearts the method Bai Yu had taught them earlier.
Lu Yueqi closed her eyes. In her mind, again and again, she recalled Bai Yu’s back as he stood in front of her in that toy factory.
That image was her only source of strength against this boundless fear.
They carefully explored forward along the corridor. Their footsteps echoed in the empty passage, sounding hollow and lonely.
After walking about thirty meters, Mo Fei suddenly stopped.
“Wait.” He frowned and turned back to look at everyone, a trace of confusion in his eyes. “Strange… why do I feel like… we’ve walked through this corridor before?”
An Mu’s eyes instantly sharpened. “Mo Fei, what did you say?”
“I don’t know how to explain it…” Mo Fei scratched his short hair irritably. “It’s just a feeling. I remember… around that corner up ahead, there should be a huge crack in the wall, like a bolt of lightning. Last time I came here, I even complained about it…”
Last time?
Except for Mo Fei, everyone else’s heart abruptly sank.
“Mo Fei, this is our first time entering this place.” Lan Ce’s voice was as calm as ice. “There is a deviation in your memory. Check your Mental Anchor immediately.”
“Impossible!” Mo Fei retorted. “I remember it very clearly! That mission was also the few of us, just without this girl… Back then, we came to deal with some case called… the ‘Sad Clown’…”
His voice grew lower and lower, and the expression on his face shifted from confusion to self-doubt. Because he realized that apart from that vague impression of a “lightning crack,” he could not recall any other details about that “mission.”
“Beep! Beep! Beep!”
On Lan Ce’s tactical tablet, the green point representing Mo Fei’s mental state suddenly flickered violently several times. Its color shifted toward the yellow that represented “warning” for 0.1 seconds before immediately returning to normal.
“Warning! A high-intensity targeted cognitive interference has been detected!” Lan Ce immediately reported. “Mo Fei, you were attacked! It’s trying to implant a false memory into your brain!”
Mo Fei hurriedly shook his head, forcing himself to forget those false memories and trying hard to recall his memory anchor.
He slammed a fist into the wall beside him with a muffled thud. “What the hell kind of ability is this!”
A wave of fear rose in him after the fact. In that instant just now, he had truly thought that memory had really happened. The feeling was like someone had swapped out a book on your shelf while you weren’t paying attention, yet you noticed nothing at all—even believing that the book had always been there to begin with.
Just then, Lu Yueqi’s body suddenly trembled as well.
“Qiqi… come home for dinner… Mom made your favorite sweet-and-sour ribs…”
An incomparably gentle and familiar voice abruptly sounded in the depths of her mind.
It was her mother’s voice.
In an instant, the gloomy and terrifying corridor before her eyes seemed to disappear. In its place was the living room of her own home, lit with warm orange light.
The dining table was filled with an abundance of dishes, and her mother, wearing an apron, was smiling and beckoning to her.
That scene was so real, so warm, that she almost could not stop herself from stepping toward that warm illusion.
“Lu Yueqi? Lu Yueqi!”
Bai Yu’s voice struck her like a shout of awakening, jolting her out of that deadly warmth.
Bai Yu’s hands were still on her, as if he had just been shaking her.
The illusion shattered like glass. Lu Yueqi was still standing in that icy corridor, a fine layer of cold sweat already seeping from her forehead.
“I… just now…” she said, still shaken.
“You were attacked too.” Bai Yu withdrew the hands that had been resting on her shoulders, his expression graver than ever before. “It’s using the unguarded parts of your memories. Family, friendship… these are all things it can exploit.”
“What a crude yet effective method.” There was a trace of disdain in Hei Yan’s voice. “Like a third-rate painter who doesn’t know how to create new beauty and can only clumsily smear paint over someone else’s original work. But for fragile mortals like you, this is already fatal enough.”
Bai Yu could clearly sense that when those two “attacks” had occurred just now, the “Eye of the Vortex” mark on the back of his hand had transmitted a faint resonance.
As expected…
“Captain,” Bai Yu turned to An Mu and said, “the source of this Evil Nightmare’s power is very likely of the same origin as the ‘Tower of Myriad Heads.’ But their forms of expression are different. The ‘Tower’ absorbs, stacks, and constructs. Here, it infiltrates, alters, and overwrites. What it wants to do is not turn us into part of it, but turn us into ‘someone else.’”
Into those tormented patients who had once died here.
An Mu’s expression became incomparably ugly.
This confirmed Lan Ce’s worst conjecture. This was an eerie enemy unlike anything they had ever encountered. It did not kill you directly; it seized your body and stole your soul.
“All members, attention! Strengthen your mental defenses! Do not think about anything unrelated to the mission! Focus all your attention on this damned corridor in front of you!” An Mu’s voice carried a trace of solemnity and concern for the problem before them.
“Tap.”
Just then, the glass marble that had vanished for so long abruptly rolled out from beneath a ward door not far ahead of them.
It rolled to the center of the corridor and then stopped, refracting a crystal-clear glimmer beneath the light of everyone’s flashlights.
This time, the sound was no longer an invitation, but a clear direction.
Everyone’s gaze turned in unison toward the ward with its door half open.
On the nameplate, a number was written in paint that had long since faded—214.
“According to the fire report, the victim in Ward 214 was a female patient named Liu Fen, sixty-seven years old, suffering from severe delusional schizophrenia. She had always firmly believed she had a seven-year-old grandson who went missing in the fire.” Lan Ce quickly read out a string of information.
“Creak…”
That door seemed to respond to his words. Without any external force, it slowly opened inward by a wider crack.
A strange smell mixed with formalin and rotting flowers rushed out eagerly from the gap in the door.
At the same time, the sound of a children’s rhyme, as if coming from an old radio, drifted faintly out of the darkness.
“Little rubber ball, banana pear, malan flowers bloom twenty-one…”
“Two-five-six, two-five-seven, two-eight, two-nine, thirty-one…”
The singing was innocent and lively, but every note was like an icy needle piercing through everyone’s eardrums again and again.